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Q / A with Simon Roth, Physiotherapist and EMG Therapist MYOact

Question 1: Dear Simon, could you please tell us if there are any peculiarities in the level and quality of Physio development in football, contrary to other sports?

As far as I can say with my experiences I had with MYOact, I would say yes and no. The biggest difference I can see is the challenge to do an individual job in a non-individual sport. In many teams you have a physio care ration of 10/1. If you work with individual athletes, you mainly have a 1:1 or even 2:1 ratio. The therapist in a team sport must manage his resources, like time, differently to the therapist in an individual sport. But at the end of the day you can’t see any quality differences in their particular work. Every physio working on that high level is a specialist in his or her profession.

Question 2: Do you see a rising interest in physio and biomechanics? Would there be continuing investments from technological companies in future to come up with new devices?

100%. My vision and idea of a highly qualified treatment of an athlete or even patient needs a new generation of sensor applied therapists or coaches. Someone who is able to create objective biomechanical data on which he is able to back up his or her therapy or training decisions.

Question 3: Are biomechanics studies and analysis useful for physiotherapy?

It is necessary to get a higher standard of its use and to get a higher quality in its implementation. But in my opinion, you always have to be careful not to forget the inter-individual aspect in working with human beings and their functional anatomy. So, besides every study which is or will be made, you always have to see the client/ patient as an individual which you have to assess correctly. I’m working closely with universities which are doing clinical studies with the EMG. We, for example, need to figure out, whether there are specific patterns in sport-specific movements on which we can refer.

Question 4: Which innovation in technology or philosophy of physiotherapy do you foresee in future?

As I mentioned, I think digitalization will also find its way into the modern physiotherapy. If we start to quickly understand the new technologies and use them as an additional tool for our daily use, we can make our therapy decisions more qualified and objective. This will lead us to better results I think. Even by implementing it into our hands-on therapy.

Question 5: What is the role of biomechanics analysis within the coaching process? How would you suggest developing skills to present insights back to managers, coaches, and players?

Well in this case, I would like to bring the example of the EMG system as a tool which gives you a view inside the muscle and its neuromuscular function. During the coaching process, the coach has an idea of how he wants to train a specific target muscle or a muscle group to create a higher outcome (e.g. force, speed, timing). Without using this monitoring tool, you can’t be sure whether the athlete is really activating the muscle you as a coach have in your mind. So, for me, most of the time it is a necessary device to control your own training aims and use it as a multifunctional biofeedback tool. With it, you are able to work on a high effective level during the exercises and by knowing the patterns you can even see physiological asymmetries which can lead to injuries or a decreased performance. Afterwards it helps you to create individual exercises based on the results of the analysis, and brings you one step closer to a more individual caring for the athlete.